Kara-Moon Forum

I had never heard decent electronic music until about two years ago. Squarepusher changed that. Six months later my friend introduced me to making electronic.

So, I've been working with Jeskola Buzz for about, ah, a year and a half now. My old DAW was destroyed (quite literally, I traveled with it too much I guess) and lost quite a bit a data- buzz presets, obscure machines, SONGS (one I was incredibly proud of). On top of it all the Buzz web site has been down going on a month now. So I downloaded Renoise. This was pretty cool, well, it looks nicer and has a few neat features- but I ended up feeling like the sounds I was getting weren't as powerful as buzz.

Up until now I didn't realize how much I had taken buzz's modularity for granted. I'm an effects junky and like to route things in odd manners with lots of compressors and gates.  :-X

So- out of curiosity- (sorry for the long post) what other software studios would you guys recommend (I'm not big on VST, mainly because the nice ones cost $$). Maybe I'm crazy but I think the best free software studio out there is buzz, despite it's mdk poms and similar errors.

-Servetus

(Really I just missed the forum and had to post. I'll load a song soon- oh- the one I lost, all I have left is an mp3. That one.)

A software which I think is great value for the money is FL Studio. They have a very good policy too; when you buy their product, you get free updates for life!

Fruity is a great solution of you work pattern based and if you want a complete environment (VSTi support, effects, mixer,...)

It's also a solution which is mush less expensive than the big names like Cubase, Sonar,...

Another one to check is Energy XT: very low in price with many features.

Also very cheap and good value is Reaper, although this one was not so stable on my DAW with some plugins...

Hopes this get you on the way...

Moon

You are actually asking 2 questions
I'm an old buzz user myself and use renoise now.
If you want to stay with a tracker environment then FL won't be a solution, granted in FL you can create patterns and chain patterns in an arrangement but it's not a real tracker as we know it.
IMHO if you insist in staying in a tracker environment then Renoise is your best choise. It's well ellaborated, has an active development (we just got version 1.9) and a very friendly user forum.

If you want an equivalent for the buzz modules, sorry there is none, VSTi is your only choice. There are a couple of buzzclones in developpement and all of them are in a more or less advances state... see http://buzzupdate.net/?cat=12
Now, I would advice against a solution like this, there has been a lot of starting projects like this and quite a couple of them have been abandonded or migrated to another project.
All those project are in a stage where it is nice to see where it is going and if you like testing, but it is definitfly not a solution if you depend on a DAW !

So, if you want to stay in a tracker environment, then Renoise would be a good choice, and for VSTi's there are hundreds of free ones out there....

Hope this helps,

k

Thanks guys..

Yeah. I've seen FL, it didn't suite me all to well. I guess I'll have to stick to buzz and Renoise. I hear Venetian Snares uses Renoise (that's actually why I checked it out at first  ;D). Anywho thanks for the quick response.

-Servetus

know u reViSiT (http://www.nashnet.co.uk/) ;) ?...cu

<2°TRo²³

And I forgot about AODIX
Here : http://www.aodix.com/pageaodixv4.html

Software writen by Arguru (RIP), was  commercial and is now freeware.
In this one you will reconize the BUZZ modular routing view

k

Aodix has caught my eye, the interface looks... plastic (I have taken a liking to hard edges and high contrasts, it feels more usable to me, utilitarian per se'). Looks don't matter much though, just downloaded it, thanks for the suggestion.

-Servetus